THE Co-operative Bank has announced the closure of one of its buildings in Leek.

Britannia House in Cheadle Road will close, with three hundred employees at the building set to be transferred to nearby Newton House.

A Co-op spokesman said: “Following a review of our two premises in Leek, we have taken the decision to base all colleagues working in the town in our building at Newton House and to exit the Britannia House site.

"This decision has been taken to ensure that the Bank is making best use of its office space in Leek.

"Approximately 300 colleagues will move to the Newton House building over the coming months. The Bank will work with those colleagues impacted to keep any disruption to a minimum as a result of the move and this will have no impact on our customers.

“We will be working closely with the local authority regarding potential options for the future of the site.

“Leek remains an important site to our business and is the centre of excellence for our mortgages and savings operations.”

7 comments

Hahaha the benny hill comment is funny as,I also hear the circus song when I see co-op on the news.not surprised really the people who work for them in leek are a bunch of 3 armed morons anyway especially the buyers now they are a different breed as you can tell I'm absolutely loving this story.

I am not going to defend the mistakes made by the coop which were largely to do with overreaching themselves at the behest of certain politicians, but it doesn't say much for the employees and shareholders of the the Britannia for voting to allow the Coop to take them over if they were really that bad. Didn't they know that takeovers are always a bad thing and the workers always lose out.

Can anyone else read or see the name "Co-op" without hearing the Benny Hill theme? They are an absolute joke.
As for the "poisonous" Britannia, I'm afraid that's an incredibly naive statement which bears little relation to reality as is now evident on a daily basis. The level of mis-management at ALL levels of the business, both at Bank, and Group level, is astonishing. In truth it's a minor miracle that the Co-op got away with it for as long as they did. A disaster waiting to happen. An over-zealous executive board who craved massive expansion against all common sense, key group-defining decisions made by people who weren't anywhere near adequately qualified and enough skeletons in the closet to fill a graveyard.
Take a look at the Treasury Select Committee hearings into the Lloyds branch purchase farce - A Chief Financial Officer who couldn't answer basic questions, A Chairman who seemed to think that overseeing the takeover of a supermarket chain somehow qualified him to oversee the "merger" with another bank, and Paul Flowers, who was more interested in seeing how much "poison" he could shove up his nose than looking after the interests of the Group's members.
The Co-op are a joke. A sub-standard supermarket chain pretending to be a bank. They're a rubbish supermarket, they're an even worse bank, and the sooner they disappear from human record the better the financial landscape will be. The only losers there would be the newspapers who'd need to find a new source of "comical incompetence" stories to fill their pages.
The Co-op, good riddance. A poisonous organisation if ever there were one.

The previous comment by 'Skimpyflagge is unfair and clearly from someone who knows nothing whatsoever about banking or finance and who clearly pays no attention to recent events regarding the whole Co Operative Group- the whole business is failing, they're losing billions of pounds due to poor management. The co-operative retail merger with Somerfield failed, the co-operative bank merger with Britannia failed- there is one common denominator. Skimpyflagge- 'your' co-op bank (and group) was managed by a totally inadequate board tied up in an out dated 'democratic' structure, this isn't just me saying it, It's official, the co-op have admitted it in their own reports! To rant about playing fields when people's jobs are under threat because of atrocious management is very unbecoming and unfair to hard working people- you should be ashamed! The whole involvement with co-op group has tarnished and wiped out an outstanding local business. Britannia had a far far better reputation than co-op bank, traditionally made far higher profits with less people, offered good products and gave an excellent service. The news today has exposed yet more shortcoming in the co-op bank. Had the co-op bank board had any sense they would have avoided trying to deflect blame on to Britannia as this is probably the only part of the business and brand worth saving. Co Op showing loyalty to Leek: Britannia House closing, Supermarket sold- I think not!

The Britannia was poison, our coop bank shouldn't have touched it with a barge pole, they have so much to answer for. Another thing: why we're the Britt allowed to spoil Birchall playing fields with this unnecessary building? It should be flattened and landscaped to help erase the building societies wrong doings.

Why do the so called big companies always think they know best? My family and myself have been customers of Britannia all of our lives and had excellent service..... Until the Co-Op took them over. Since then its been nothing but problems. I feel so sorry for the staff who are trying to put a brave face on it, but knowing that service is no where near what it was or what they would like to give.